Research Interests

I hold a faculty position at the Natural Resources Institute in the
Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Earth, Envrionment & Resources at the
University of Manitoba. This follows five years working in Latin America
(Bolivia & Mexico) to support rural community development and eight
years on land use planning and enterprise development in northern
Canada. I now work with Master of Natural Resource Management students
interested in ethnobotany and ethnoecology with a particular focus
on the practice of harvesting (gathering, hunting, fishing) within
forested landscapes. We focus both on harvesting for subsistence and
for non-commercial and commercial trade. In the area of commercial
trade an emerging interest is in documenting the value chains and
networks of specific organisms and products. At the Ph.D. level I
have been working with students to develop conceptual framing and
methodologies to understand the topologies of harvesting networks
and the continuity of such practices. This work builds out of my previous
research on cultural landscape documentation and realization that
different approaches were required to understand both the everyday
practice of harvesting and its continuity.

I have also recently begun to draw together my experience as a professional
planner and my interests in ethnobotany, ethnoecology and community
enterprises in developing an approach that we term biocultural design.
While this is an emergent interest it provides an applied platform
to work with community enterprises to consider how the process of
design can be utilized to develop products rooted in knowledge of
the biological materials guided by the cultural values of a region.
While we consider biocultural design to be an integrated process we
break it into two phases. In the first phase we are building upon
my previous work on cultural landscape documentation and enhancing
that methodology by bringing in thinking from cultural asset mapping
to create an approach of biocultural asset mapping. The second phase
utilizes a team approach that includes community members and other
relevant knowledge holders to move from documentation to the design
of biocultural products.

I look forward to hearing from and working with students who have
an interest in exploring some of these topics in partnership with
communities.

Book Chapters:

Davidson-Hunt, I.J., P. McConney, C.J. Idrobo, M. Rodriguez. 2016. The use of biodiversity for responding to globalized change: a people in nature approach to support the resilience of rural and remote communities. In I.J. Davidson-Hunt, H. Suich, S.S. Meijer and N. Olsen (eds.) People in Nature: Valuing the Diversity of Interrelationships between People and Nature. Pp. 19-31. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.

Wheeler, M.J., A.J. Sinclair, P. Fitzpatrick, A.P. Diduck and I.J. Davidson-Hunt. In Press. Place-based inquiry’s potential for encouraging public participation: Stories from the common ground land in Kenora, Ontario. Society and Natural Resources.

Davidson-Hunt, I.J. and C.J. Idrobo. 2015. The role of creativity, biodiversity, sites, and mobility in crafting resilient ‘foodscapes’: An example from the Atlantic Forest Coast of Brazil. Local Environment, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2015.1075479

Orozco-Quintero, A. and I.J. Davidson-Hunt. 2010. Community-based enterprises and the commons: The case of San Juan Nuevo Parangaricutiro, Mexico. International Journal of the Commons 4(1) [Online] www.thecommonsjournal.org/index.php/ijc/issue/view/13.

Creative Works

Lake of the Woods Discovery Forest. Co-designer Richard Bolton. Permanent interpretive trail located at Lake of the Woods Discovery Centre, Kenora, Ontario. 2013.
Along with Richard Bolton we worked with the Lake of the Woods Discovery Centre to develop interpretation of iconic forest species and rare habitats of Lake of the Woods. Interpretive materials provide English, Anishinaabe and Scientific nomenclature along with general ecological information and uses of the species by different cultural groups of the region.
Miijim: Traditional Foods of the Lake of the Woods Anishinaabeg (Miijim: Anishinaabe Gaabi Inanjiged Zaaga’iganiing). Co-Curators: Phyllis Pinesse, Iain J. Davidson-Hunt and Lori Nelson. 2010.
An exhibit that ran from August 4th to September 25th, 2010 at Lake of the Woods Museum, Kenora, Ontario. The exhibit presented ethnobotanical research that I had undertaken with Iskatewizaagegan No. 39 Independent First Nation with a focus on foods. To create the exhibit we formed a design team made up of people from the museum, IIFN and myself. We then developed the message and panels along with new interviews undertaken by a youth from IIFN. Videos were also developed from these interviews. Programming throughout the museum brought together people from Kenora to learn from IIFN elders and harvesters about how the land has and continues to provide food for their community.

Co-lead. People in Nature Knowledge Basket (PIN), based in Theme for Sustainable Livelihoods, Commission for Environmental, Economic and Environmental Policy, International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Member, Manitoba Professional Planning Institute / Canadian Institute of Planners